Thursday, April 6, 2017

- Satanist’s Girlfriend Sentenced in Murders of Two Men in North Carolina
“He had a pentagram and ‘666’ tattoos all over his body,” “He told me he practiced satanism.”

- Lillelid murders still haunt East Tennessee, 20 years later
"He remembers the killers, too, whose names, mug shots and fascination with devil worship, blood-drinking and the occult topped front pages, TV newscasts and tabloid covers for months after the killing.""News reports and word-of-mouth later told of séances, satanic rituals and an attempt to burn the number “666” into the motel room carpet."

- Woman convicted of 1980 satanic cult murder up for parole
"A convicted killer who was involved in a devil-worshipping prostitution ring."
"Murphy was part of a satanic cult and prostitution ring that held rituals in area woods during the late 70s and early 80s."

Satanist’s Girlfriend Sentenced in Murders of Two Men in North Carolina
By Jeff Truesdell March 10, 2017

An avowed satanist’s girlfriend, accused of killing one man and helping to bury the body of another in a suburban North Carolina backyard, pleaded guilty Thursday to her part in the crimes.

Authorities who accused Amber Nicole Burch, 27, first found themselves investigating a link to possible satanic ritual and sacrifice after the bones of two missing men, Joshua Wetzler, 32, and Tommy Welch, 31, were discovered in 2014 behind the red-bricked Clemmons home where Burch had lived with her boyfriend, Pazuzu Illah Algarad, and his mother.

Prosecutors charged Burch and Algarad — the former John Larson, a “weird goth kid” in the words of a former classmate, who had dropped out of school following his parents’ divorce and legally changed his name to mimic that of a demon in The Exorcist — with the murders.

A third person, Krystal Nicole Matlock, 30, was charged with accessory after the fact to murder.

On Thursday, Burch pleaded guilty in Forsyth County Superior Court to second-degree murder, armed robbery and accessory after the fact to murder, reports the Winston-Salem Journal....

“They seemed like a regular family with a young boy,” former neighbor Keith Bryson said, “but over the years the boy went astray,” developing a fascination for evil that he accented with a split tongue and teeth filed into spikes.

“He had a pentagram and ‘666’ tattoos all over his body,” Bryson said after Burch and Algarad were arrested. “He told me he practiced satanism.”

As part of an investigation into an unrelated criminal case, Algarad earlier told psychiatrists he engaged in religious practices that required a monthly animal sacrifice.

Police who entered the murder scene in 2014 to investigate found a home then filled with garbage, mold and animal feces. Algarad already was on their radar, having been charged as an accessory after the fact when he allegedly allowed the assailant in an involuntary shooting death to stay at the house in 2010. The next year, 2011, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault after choking his mother, Cynthia Lawson.http://people.com/crime/satanists-girlfriend-sentenced-in-murders-of-two-men-in-north-carolina/

“What do you think we should do?” he asked. “Do you think we should let them go or do you think we should kill them?”

Six people, all serving life sentences with no chance of parole, know what happened next that Sunday evening of April 6, 1997. Each tells a slightly different story. In each story, another fires the fatal shots.

John Huffine can recite the events from memory. The retired detective knows every inch of the spot along Payne Hollow Lane in rural Greene County, right down to the number of feet from the spot where the van parked to the main road, to the nearest house, to the ditch where deputies found four bodies lying in a bloody pile. Twenty years later, he can point out all the landmarks.

....He remembers the killers, too, whose names, mug shots and fascination with devil worship, blood-drinking and the occult topped front pages, TV newscasts and tabloid covers for months after the killing, and whose motives still drive online debates among true-crime aficionados. Natasha Wallen Cornett, then 18; Karen Howell, then 17; Joseph Lance Risner, then 20; Jason Blake Bryant, then 14; Joseph Dean Mullins, then 19; and Crystal Rena Sturgill, then 18, all deny to this day they knew what was about to happen on the side of that gravel road.

The longtime investigator knows how the killers met their victims, can tell the story of how the family, devout Jehovah’s Witnesses headed home from a religious convention, stopped at the rest area on Interstate 81 South at just the right time to cross paths with six Kentucky youths on the run from police, parents and a community they hated. He knows the path they followed from there to the murder scene. He knows how many shots were fired, in what order and from what distance.

....Life had revolved around conflict, rebellion and escape since the time Cornett turned a teenager in the southeast Kentucky town of Betsy Layne. She starved herself to look thinner. She slashed her arms with razors and licked the blood. She wore black, pierced her eyebrows, read books on witchcraft and called herself Satan’s daughter. At age 14, she threatened her mother with a knife. The mother tried in vain to find treatment for her. Cornett told friends she’d talked to angels and demons since age 4. She wrote about the apparitions in her diary and gave them names, in between fantasies of macabre violence and tirades against her mother.

She’d tasted life away from home twice. The first taste came when she married at age 17 in a ceremony where the bride and her maids of honor dressed in black and wore chains. That marriage ended less than a year later when her husband dropped her off at her mother’s home and drove away without a word. The second came a few months later when Cornett and a friend drove to New Orleans and lived on the streets before coming home. She told friends she wanted to go back, that she dreamed of living out one of her favorite movies, “Natural Born Killers,” Oliver Stone’s ode to mayhem about a pair of lovers who leave a trail of bodies on their way to the Mexican border.

....That idea came up again during a Friday night party of drinking beer and getting high in a room at the Colley Motel in Pikeville, Ky., on April 4, 1997. Most of those in the room had known each other since at least high school, staying on and off with Cornett at her mother’s trailer. Karen Howell, a friend Cornett called her "soulmate," shared a fascination with the occult and stories of childhood visions and sexual abuse. Dean Mullins was dating Cornett; Joe Risner had dated Cornett and now Howell. Crystal Sturgill, a newcomer no longer welcome in her home after reporting her stepfather for sexual abuse, had found a home with Cornett.

....News reports and word-of-mouth later told of séances, satanic rituals and an attempt to burn the number “666” into the motel room carpet. Bell, the prosecutor, believes Cornett birthed the plan there for a Mexico-bound murder spree. Witnesses say Cornett cried and commiserated with Howell about fighting with her mother, hating life in Kentucky and wanting out. Risner, the oldest of the group at 20, was on spring break from the local tech center, where he'd been taking trade classes after earning his GED. He had a car, a Chevrolet Citation registered in his mother’s name. He was up for a trip.

....Huffine, the detective, doesn’t buy any single version of the story told by the six. The story of a single shooter doesn’t match up with the forensics to him. He shakes his head at the popular theory of Satanism as a motive, too. In his view, it’s as simple as six people on the run looking for leg room and a working engine.